Featured Database Articles

9 Steps to an Automated Trace

Profiler, SQL Server's built-in tracing feature, is an invaluable tool for performance tuning and debugging SQL Server applications. With it, you can trace every request a database application makes to SQL Server and use that data to improve performance. For example, if you run a Profiler trace during a long-running process, you might find that SQL Server is using a table scan, encountering table locks, or running into other performance-robbing events. In most cases, I run Profiler at the request of a developer who's trying to debug some tricky database code. Occasionally, if time permits, I go on a preemptive strike and run my favorite trace, the duration trace. This Profiler trace looks for processes accessing SQL Server that take more than 1 second. One second seems to be a good limit, letting you see the processes that are consuming the most resources without trapping everything.

Advertiser Disclosure:
Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which QuinStreet receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. QuinStreet does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.